GAA club promotes wellbeing

A NORTHSIDE club have been praised for promoting health and wellbeing in the GAA. 

Craobh Chiaráin GAA Club, based in Donnycarney, hosted the launch of the association’s ‘Healthy Clubs Roadshow’ last week.

The roadshow will travel to all four provinces to showcase the GAA’s ‘Healthy Clubs’ project, an initiative focused on improving the health of Ireland through clubs in local communities.

The project aims to deliver information and programmes concerning areas such as healthy eating, physical activity, emotional and mental wellbeing, anti-smoking initiatives and community development to every club across the country.

Currently in second pilot phase, Craobh Chiaráin was selected to be one of the 60 clubs in the second phase alongside other Dublin clubs including Raheny, Thomas Davis and Kilmacud Crokes.

At the event, GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail spoke about the importance of the project and health to the organisation.

“It has always been the core business of the GAA club to promote health and wellbeing, for everybody,” O’Fearghail said.

“If we can feed into a healthier community, a better healthier Ireland, we at the GAA are very much delighted to be a part of that.”

The GAA president also praised and acknowledged the work hosts Craobh Chiaráin had done within the project. 

Formally joining the Healthy Clubs programme last year, Craobh Chiaráin began their own project to improving health and community over three years ago with the creation of the Donnycarney Together group.

Club president Aidan O’Toole spoke about the inception of the group and the club’s five-year plan dedicated to better wellbeing in the area.

“We wanted to move out of our own community and enhance the links that we had there and make new ones,” O’Toole said.

“The whole aim of Donnycarney Together was to help each other reach mutual goals and assist each other along the way where we could.”

Since joining the project, a number of initiatives have started in the club to promote health in the community.

An ‘Operation Transformation’ programme, set up last year, saw 120 people take part in a 16-week challenge, 30 per cent of which had no previous links to Craobh Chiaráin.

The club also worked in conjunction with Scoil Chiaráin National School to start ‘Run For A Mile’, an activity where both students and teachers take part in physical activity together four to five times a week.

Craobh Chiaráin member Mick O’Toole has also promoted and launched programmes in the club dedicating to mental wellbeing.

One of the highlights was the annual hill climb to the Sugar Loaf, an outing which O’Toole said exemplifies both the healthy wellbeing and community empowerment the Healthy Clubs is now promoting.

“A couple of years ago we decided to do an activity everyone in the club could take part in,” O’Toole said.

“We decided to go with a hill walk and chose the Sugar Loaf because the youngest person in the club could climb it and the oldest person in the club could climb it as well. 

“The Sugar Loaf has to be an annual fixture or we’re in trouble,” he joked. 

The third phase of the programme will open up to more clubs in 2018, although it was stated that all healthy club programmes would be made available to clubs to carry out themselves.

REPORT: Daniel O’Connor